Smizik: Monroe deserves his chance in RF

An excerpt of a couple of grafs with a link to the piece is fine, but anything beyond that is stealing, IMO.

I can tell you how to link stuff, if you don’t know and would like the help.

Russell is playing Moss because he’s trying to maximize the team’s future value (by developing Moss into a productive ML-er), rather than the team’s current record. Which is exactly what a rebuilding squad should do.

As the old saying goes, you can’t sit your way out of a slump. You have to hit your way out.

Give me a break.

Ward got the call to join the Pirates. He’s an intriguing guy. Anyone who can put the ball in the Allegheny River at PNC Park is worth a look. But Ward is not a prospect. He’ll be 29 next month and the Pirates are his third major-league stop. He batted .183 last season with Los Angeles. If by some chance he does the job for the Pirates, so what? He’ll be gone after the season, just like Reggie Sanders was last year.

What the Pirates need are young players on the cusp of stardom, not ones looking back at it or ones who never knew it. They need another Barry Bonds, another Bobby Bonilla, players they drafted and developed and who led them to championships.

We’re not talking about the Bonds of today, the player who has become one of the greatest in baseball history. We’re talking about the Bonds and Bonilla of 1986, their first years with the Pirates when they had the look of hitters about them and when the organization felt confident enough in them to play them every day. -Smizik, May 13, 2004

Everything that he said about Ward in that piece applies to Morgan today.

Good job with the link, and thanks for changing it so quickly.

But lumberco has every right to link to his opinion piece.

I know if some newspaper piece supported a point I’d made exhaustively, I would link to it. Though I know I’d get plenty of scorn from citing to Smizik.

It’s “any port in a storm.”

As for me, the team’s won-loss record in 2009 means nothing to me. I want to see Moss being given every chance to prove himself. (BTW, I want the same for Delwyn Young who is getting no chance at all — both Young and Moss were the 5th OF on playoff teams with Manny Ramirez in LF and are about the same age with the same minor league reps.)

But if DK got his quotes right and management says that Moss’s problem is that he’s trying to hit a 5 run HR ever AB, then Moss does need to sit for a few days to get his mind right. I don’t know why JR won’t do this — he did it for Luigi?

.. .Smizik isn’t the only writer thinking Craig Monroe should get more starts:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09124/967622-63.stm

A bunch of mentions of Monroe in questions about giving young and others a chance. Then he gets defensive:

mtw: Why the outcry for Monroe? One big game this year, 32 years old, career OBP in the .320 range.

Dejan Kovacevic: I do not detect any outcry. In my case, I was just underscoring the point that the Pirates apparently are going to stick with the outfielders they use regularly.

DK annoys me sometimes. He likes to say that he’s this impartial voice, when it’s obvious he has biases.

One of the things that’s so funny/sad about all this is that, when DL used to do things like signing Raul Mondesi to play ahead of Craig Wilson, or Joe Randa to play ahead of Freddy Sanchez, many fans ripped him for it, and rightly so. That was always DL’s approach—bring in the zero-upside veteran to take time away from the guy who may or may not turn into a better player further down the road if given the chance. Now we have the exact same situation, except that Monroe has had only a tiny fraction of the success that Mondesi and Randa had, and is much more clearly washed up than they were at the time DL signed them.

I’ve said it before and I expect I’ll be saying it again and again — The less this team’s management behaves like DL, the more they get ripped for it.

Quality point, as per usual.

I have to think the pro-Monroe sentiment is largely from those who were a bit intoxicate with being 4 games over .500 “so late in the season,” as if 25-30 games into a season was late August. What little success we’ve had has largely been on the backs of players not expected to succeed – Jaramillo, Ohlendorf, AnLaRoche, Nyjer. Slotting young guys as starters is going to produce surprises and disappointments. Now is not the time to be shift philosophies.

Monroe reminds me of Rob Mackowiak in 2004. On May 27 of that year, I remember the calls for his starting reached a fevered pitch. He was hitting .347 with a .940 OPS in limited time as a role player/spot starter at 2B, 3B, CF and RF. He succeeded because he was managed the way he was. Lloyd put him into ballgames in which he could succeed, and kept him on the bench in situations where he was likely to achieve success. Come June, Mackowiak was a de facto starter, playing everyday at one of those four positions. And of course, over-exposed, he started a long, downward journey to career norms.

Good bench players who are managed well should have robust stats in small sample sizes. Why? Because the manager shoudl be putting them in specific situations in which they are primed to succeed. Monroe is no different/ Play him more often and I’m sure we’ll see the player with a career .746 OPS emerge.

You guys don’t believe his strong start to the season is sustainable? ( I’m not trying to argue. It’s a genuine question. Lol.)